Characters
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Characters in action
Motivation
The rounded personality
Caricature
Active and passive characters
Characters determining plot
Number of characters
The basic character roles
Devices of characterization
The development of character
Characters in action
• We learn a great deal about the characters in a
play by closely observing their actions.
• There are countless questions which can be
asked about the characters in action.
• We ask primarily why a character does what he
does and conclude that it must be because he is
a certain kind of person.
Motivation
• The fact remains that the larger actions
which characters complete in the course of
a play have identifiable motives behind
them and thus we as critics have every
right and duty to analyze character
motivation : love, hope of reward, jealousy,
revenge, religious feeling, greed etc.
The rounded personality
• While we can usually speak of a character’s
central motive for doing what he does in the
course of the play, we can rarely assume that he
has one and only one motive.
• The playwright has the option of course to allow
his character to have only one motive, but , in
general, characters come to us as complex
human personalities with many facets.
Caricature
• In fiction we speak of a “caricature’ when a
character’s outstanding trait becomes so
outstanding that it becomes unbelievable.
• In drama we generally refer to this kind of
character as a type
• In general we find types among minor
characters but almost never among major.
Active and passive characters
• Some characters in plays do not change;
they begin as the same kinds of
characters as they are in the end. These
passive characters are acted upon by the
events of the play: they are usually matic
or unchanging
• Conversely, some characters are active
Characters determining plot
• The essence of drama, its plot, develops
out of the characters themselves. Things
should happen in the play because the
characters in the play are the way they
are.
• The plot with all of its small episodes and
incidents, its complications and
simplifications, is motored by the natures
of the characters.
Number of characters
• We must pay attention to the number of
characters in the play. Obviously the
dramatist cannot include more than he has
time enough to develop.
• Thus in a play which runs for several
hours, only a limited number of its
characters can be developed
The Basic character roles
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Lovers
Wives
Husbands
Friends
Enemies
Tragic heroes
Protagonist
antagonist
The characters in time
• When a character walks onto the stage,
we know almost nothing about him.
• We must learn action as well as witness
action: the same principle of revealing the
events prior to the opening of the play
operates in revealing death offstage
Devices of characterization
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The appearance of the characters
Asides and soliloquies
Hidden narration
Language
Character in action
The development of the character
• Our central task when analyzing character
is to delineate and describe the
character’s development within the play.